


The Dance of the Chimney Sweeps (Step In Time)

by Brosedshield



Series: The Great LJ Backup of 2018 [1]
Category: Mary Poppins (1964)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Fairies, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 08:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16888854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: Bert is more than he seems to the children, and wants to mean more to a certain governess.





	The Dance of the Chimney Sweeps (Step In Time)

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Great LJ Backup of 2018.
> 
> After watching Mary Poppins (original) my overactive imagination decided that it had a perfectly logical explanation for why tall, cheerful Dick Van Dyke is a Victorian chimney sweep when my spotting understanding insists that the job was usually reserved for underprivileged children who thereafter died of lung ailments. The answer? Fairies.
> 
> Most of the inspiration for this story comes from Step in Time and a few details about luck from Chim Chim Cher-ee. Originally posted at LJ circa 2010.

_The Poppinses were not known for their kindness. Indeed, in the bad old days of King James they had been known more than once to throw other magickers to the dogs to throw the witchhunters off their own scent._

_Under Queen Victoria, the overwhelming influence of iron and unmagical thought offered them a measure of protection. No one was looking for the magic that pumped through their veins, and oftentimes they could blend perfectly with the working and lower middle class around them. They were clerks, craftsmen, factory supervisors and their sons went to school and their daughters married poor parsons and worked as governesses._

_One of greatest, most fearless, and—remarkably—kind was Mary…_

**Step In Time**

A long time ago his people had had a different name, but that didn’t change anything about what they were, still as comfortable in the high reaches of the night as in the tight darkness, burrowing into and wiping away the memory of died fires.

Chimney sweep covered well enough, and they hid as safely as any of the old magic peoples could in a world where the forces that gave them life were being ground away by the steel and the unbelief.

Bert—his old name was not forgotten, but rarely used, even between the oldest ones—was, in as much as they had a leader, King of the Chimney Sweeps. He had the luck that was next to life for their people, and a focus and an independent will that, many times, they lacked.

When he called them to dance, to step in time they responded gleefully. He called and his luck—which was near to the essense of life for many of them—flowed out of him and into them.

They had noticed Mary Poppins standing beside him—it would be blindness not to see the blaze of her power—but had ignored her when she seemed to be amused, and not a threat to their King or themselves. But when Bert called for her, called her to step in time and she came, the fire of their King’s happiness could have blown them out like a candle or flamed them up. 

Most of them knew of her, daughter of the best of the old magicker families. She was a practitioner so strong she worked in public—before the common humans—and no one whispered a word against her.

Easy to feel their King losing his heart to her, easy to fear. Except for the soft glow in her eyes when he smiled at her. She was happy too, when Bert dashed off to show her another trick, another movement, another dash of power like bright curry in an old English stew.

Afterward, before Bert could leave with her and the children, a chimney sweep so old he had no name caught him by the blackened, sooty sleeve.

“Ye know she’s a ‘umaner, don't ye, Yer Majesty?” he said. “She ain’t gonna love you.”

His King looked down at the other sweep, and there was no luck in him. “Ye don’t know ‘er,” he said. And then he left, following his lady.


End file.
